From the desk of Brian Salvatore, friend to all the Jews:
L’chaim! The Multiversity Comics staff is a multicultural bunch, and wanted to spread around the holiday cheer to our chosen brethren with our new series: Multiversity Lights the Menorah!
Each night, at sundown, we will light a candle on the Menorah and tell a tale of a story, creator’s run, or general theme in comics that, much like the oil that lasted eight nights for the Israelites, went on for far longer than any of us could have expected. First up is one of our resident Jewish writers, Joshua Mocle, talking about a fellow Yid, Peter David, and his run on X-Factor!
So, grab the shammus and light the first candle, Josh!
I still remember the surprise I felt back in 2004 when it was announced that Jamie Madrox would be given his own titular mini-series. Adding to my surprise was the fact that it would be written by Peter David, the writer that arguably defined the character more than any other in his X-Factor run a decade earlier. After all, I wasn’t entirely sure anyone BUT David and myself even knew who the character was, much less had any interest in reading the (mostly) solo adventures of him. And yet, on the final page of that mini, it was revealed that the numbers were in the book’s favor and that it would be leading into a brand new X-Factor ongoing starring Jamie’s spiritual rebuilding of the former government agency he was a part of in the form of a detective agency. Sure enough, the following winter, in the wake of Marvel’s event du jour House of M, X-Factor Volume 3 began as Jamie and his merry band of Mutant C & D listers began to investigate the cause of the Mutant Decimation. Six years and multiple cast and purpose changes later and the book is still standing, playing a vital role in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and primed to enter it’s next big phase as a member of Team Wolverine in the current X-Men Line shift, Regenesis.
And I can’t for the life of me figure out why.
Don’t get me wrong, unlike some of the other books being written about for this feature, X-Factor is a fantastic comic. A true diamond in the rough that I still enjoy just as much (if not more, at some points) than I did when it began. Month in and month out, for six years, its been a must read for me and a few of my fellow writers. But I suspect I am not alone in wondering how the hell its still around given the many shifts in the comic book industry since the book began back in 2005, especially given how many specifically X-Men satellite books have come and gone within that same amount of time. Sure, having it begin and tangentially remain a noir-esque crime-ish book gave it a lot of points in the “functionally unique” category amongst Marvel’s mutant offerings, but for a good while it’s numbers hung on the low side, occasionally receiving a boost from an event tie-in or so. That said, I’ve been told (by Associate Editor David Harper) that consistency is often more key to a book’s survival than sheer mass, and consistent this book has been.
However, if we’re going to be honest, if there is one factor that can really motivate the purchase of a comic above any else, it is not the creators working on it or even the story being told with it. More than any other factor, I’m betting the difference between a book that gets bought or left on the shelf by the average fan is the characters featured in it. Given that, the closest to a mainstream character featured as a core member of this book’s cast is Longshot, and even he hasn’t been relevant for give or take 25 years. However, just because the likes of Madrox, Rictor, Siryn, Strong Guy or Shatterstar aren’t looked upon with youthful reminiscence (by anyone but me or the four million people that bought X-Force #1), David has spat in the face of their combined D list status and turned them into some of the most compelling, human characters seen in any comic book on the stands right now, let alone at Marvel. So if Joe Average comes home from the movies and passes on this book due to a tenuous connection to the characters, then that is their loss.
Continued belowWith everything stacked against it, with no hype or marketing platform to hold itself up, X-Factor prevails. In an industry slowly eating itself from the inside, with a cast with next to no household appeal, X-Factor triumphs and only gets better every year. If that isn’t a comic book miracle, I don’t know what is.
